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How to use Squarespace… The preparation before you start

Before you start using Squarespace to build your website, youâ€™re going to need a few things:

1. Domain name

As one of our website setup steps, weâ€™re going to link your domain name with your Squarespace account.

So, you will need a domain name. If you havenâ€™t purchased a domain name yet, purchase one now.

You can buy it from Squarespace too, but I wonâ€™t recommend that.

Domain transfer between hosting providers or website builders or CMSes is always easier when the domain is registered with a third party domain registrar.

NameCheap is an excellent domain name registrar service that gives competitive prices and great service. Check it out to buy a domain name for your Squarespace website.

2. A rough idea of your siteâ€™s navigation structureÂ

Knowing your siteâ€™s navigation structure (or its main menu items) before starting to build it makes the process faster.

So take a paper and draw how your site menu will look like. This exercise will help in finalizing the different pages youâ€™ll be adding to your site.

For example, you could add some of the following pages to your site:

About

Start here

Portfolio

Services

Hire

Store

Features

Pricing

Team

Contact

3.Â Copy and graphics

The last thing youâ€™ll need before you begin creating your site is content. So write rough drafts of all the pages that youâ€™re going to add.

Also, pile up all the images (or videos) youâ€™re going to need to build your Squarespace website. If you need stock images, arrange those too. Having the right images can have a huge impact on conversions.

Having all the content and media handy will a lot of time later.

Letâ€™s now begin with building the site.

(If youâ€™ve already signed up for a Squarespace trial, jump to the first part of the guide.)

How to build your first Squarespace website

Step #1: Signing up for Squarespace website

All Squarespace plans begin with a free trial.

To sign up for a free trial, visit Squarespace and choose the option to â€˜CREATE A SITEâ€™:

Two simple steps in starting a Squarespace site: 1, Setup a (new or move in) domain; 2, Choose templates to create a site or store.

Next, choose a template.

To make this step easy, Squarespace groups its themes into the following categories:

Businesses

Portfolios

Blogs

Musicians

Restaurants

Weddings

Personal

Squarespace Themes Samples

Here are a number of designs you can find at Squarespace themes. Click on the following thumbnails to have a clearer view.

Theme name: Five

Theme name: Jasper

Theme name: Tudor

Theme name: Marquee

Theme name: Pacific

Theme name: Heights

Theme name: Shift

Theme name: Forte

Theme name: Rover

Walkthrough Squarespace the signup process

For the purpose of this walkthrough, I set it up using my Squarespace account.

Iâ€™m going for the business category and am choosing the template, Montauk.

2. What is this website about?

3. What are your goals for this site?

#3- What are your goals for this site? This question too supports multiple answers. Iâ€™m choosing Showcase or create a portfolio of my work, Get hired, Blog or publish content, and Sell products or services online.

1. Logo & Title

Weâ€™ve already given our site a name, and so in this step, Iâ€™ll add a tagline. Letâ€™s set the tagline to â€˜A resource for Squarespace beginnersâ€™.

1. The next option under this setting is to add a logo. If you have a logo, upload it. 2. Because I donâ€™t have a logo, and because Squarespace gives its users a free and extremely elegant logo maker tool, Iâ€™m choosing the â€˜CREATE A NEW LOGOâ€™ option.

Once I click on the button, Iâ€™m directed to Squarespaceâ€™s logo maker tool.

Squarespace Logo Maker

This logo maker tool lets you:

Choose from a ton of logo icons

Create just a text-based logo

Go for an image logo

Change the font and color of the logo text

Preview how the logo will look on business cards and other branding material

Overall, Squarespace's logo maker tool is pretty intuitive. It has its various design elements or icons on the panel on the left-hand side.

You can use the search option to find icons that are relevant to your site.

When I searched for the keyword â€˜websiteâ€™, I got many great icons. I chose the one you can see on your right and made an image logo.

I tried to download a high-resolution version of the logo, but the editor prompted me to sign up for a Squarespace account to be able to do it.

But still, a low-resolution version can be downloaded at this point too. That will do for now.

Once your Squarespace trial ends and you upgrade to a premium plan, you should be able to download the high-resolution version without any problem. When you get the high-resolution file, you can upload it to your Squarespace site.

The next two options under this design item are setting the favicon and the social sharing logo. If you have these, great. Otherwise, move on to the next setting.

To save the changes youâ€™ve made so far, click on the â€˜SAVEâ€™ button on top of the panel.

Note: If youÂ want to create an awesome favicon for your website, here is a list of free favicon generator you can have a look.

2. Template

The â€˜Templateâ€™ section shows all the templates that are downloaded inside a Squarespace site.

Right now, as you can see, my templates list just includes the template Montauk because this is the template I signed up with when setting my trial.

Montauk, installed 39 minutes ago.

If youâ€™re happy with the template youâ€™ve chosen, go to the next step. Or, you can download more templates.

Tip

Donâ€™t spend time on downloading and switching templates at this point because it wonâ€™t be helpful.

Itâ€™s only after you design your site and upload content to it that youâ€™ll be able to understand how the different templates are showing your content.

You wonâ€™t be able to figure out much with the demo content and images.

How to find out what Squarespace template a website is using

If you see a Squarespace template you like and wondering what theme it's using, here's how to find out,

Right-click on the page > View Source / Page Source

You will noticeÂ <!– This is Squarespace. –> near the top of the code to indicate it's a Squarespace website

Press Ctrl + F to search the page for:Â templateidÂ and copy the code

The template, Montauk, I'm using is having the template id:Â 50521cf884aeb45fa5cfdb80. Try yourself.Â

Squarespace Pages allow you to:

When you access the pages settings for the first time, youâ€™ll notice that the â€˜TOP NAVIGATIONâ€™ shows the menu items from the demo.

For now, Iâ€™d like you to just forget about the pages from the demo and start adding your own pages.

For each page that a site typically needs, Squarespace has provided pre-made templates.

For example for pages like the About, Features, Store, Contact and more â€” you already have ready-to-use page layouts that you can just load to your site.

1. How to add a pageÂ toÂ a pre-made template

Letâ€™s see how you can add a page to a pre-made template.

As you can see in the following screenshot, there are two â€˜+â€™ signs you can click on to add a page to your site.

When you click on the first option, you donâ€™t just add a page, but you also add it to your websiteâ€™s main menu.

And when you click on the second option, you simply add a page.

1. There are two â€˜+â€™ signs you can click on to add a page to your site; 2. Click ‘Page' to createÂ a new page.

Iâ€™d suggest you to start adding a page with the second option. After youâ€™re done with creating the pages, delete all the demo pages, and drag all your freshly generated pages and drop them under the TOP NAVIGATION.

Letâ€™s add an â€˜Aboutâ€™ page.Â Once you click on the item â€˜Pageâ€™, youâ€™ll see the following options on the panel on the left-hand side:

Once I click on â€˜START EDITINGâ€™, the selected about me page layout gets loaded in Squarespaceâ€™s page editor.Â To edit the page elements, hover on the pageâ€™s top (which is right under the navigation), and youâ€™ll see the following options panel open up:

Move your mouse and hover on the pageâ€™s top (which is right under the navigation), and youâ€™ll see the highlighted options panel open up.

Click on â€˜EDITâ€™.

At this point, you can either start editing the page content, or you can click on the â€˜+â€™ sign at the top of the page to add more design elements to it.

Click on the â€˜+â€™ sign at the top of the page to add more design elements to the page.Some of the design elements you can add to your page at Squarespace.

Once you add an element to your site, itâ€™s easy to rearrange its position with the simple drag and drop functionality.

Note:

If you customize the default layouts and add different elements including the spacer element, sometimes your mobile preview can look funny â€” more so, the spacing between the different elements can look a bit off.

(The default layouts render beautifully, though.)

Adding other pages is similar to adding the about page.

For now, itâ€™s best to use the default layouts if you want to get the site up and running super-fast.

At the end of this step, you should have all the pages of your site ready to be moved to the main menu.

Once youâ€™ve cleaned up your navigation, itâ€™s time to work on the pages.

2. How to add content to Squarespace pages:

To add content (or to customize the design of a page), just click on the pageâ€™s name.

Click on the page name to load the Squarespace page editor.

Once you click, the page editor will load and you can replace the templateâ€™s content with the content you wrote in the preparation steps.

3. How to configure some high-level page settings

High-level page settings can help with a pageâ€™s:

Navigation title

Title

Description (often used for SEO)

URL slug

Header image

Tracking code

Page settings to be configured.

To make higher-level changes to a page or to delete it, click on the settings icon next to a pageâ€™s name.

Also, to set a page as the homepage, you need to open these settings for the selected page and choose the â€˜SET AS HOMEPAGEâ€™ option.

An important Squarespace page: the blog

Although you can add a blog as a simple page in Squarespace, you may need to do a few additional settings for it.

1. Click on settings gear on the blog menu item from under â€˜TOP NAVIGATIONâ€™; 2.Â Once you do, the blog settings panel will open up; 3. The blog setting panel –Â Once youâ€™ve configured these blog-level preferences, youâ€™re ready to add blog posts to your site.

To add a post, click on the â€˜+â€™ sign on the blog menu item options.

The post editor is pretty intuitive.

At the bottom, you will see settings to add a category and tags to your post.

You can also choose to save you post as a draft or to publish it right away.Once youâ€™ve written a post, click on the â€˜Optionsâ€™ from the blog menu on the top.

The Options settings let you:

Add a featured image to a post

Assign an author to the post

Write an excerpt

Mark a post as a featured post

Hopefully, with the above section, youâ€™ll have a great looking website ready with your content and even a blog.

Letâ€™s now look at Squarespace settings.

Step #4: Using Squarespace: ExploringÂ the settings

Using Squarespaceâ€™s settings are easy. They are grouped into 3 categories:

General

Website

Commerce

Of these, the â€˜Generalâ€™ category allows you to add business information like your business name, address, tax id, and more.

And the â€˜Commerceâ€™ settings are relevant to someone who wants to run an online store or add a store to their site.

Of these categories, the â€˜Websiteâ€™ category is the one Iâ€™d like to talk about.

The â€˜Websiteâ€™ settings include:

Basic information – This setting helps you add an excerpt about what your site is about. Some templates display this information, so you should fill it out.

Domain – Â After youâ€™ve purchased a domain, you should come back this setting and point your Squarespace site to that domain. Third party domain integration is a breeze.

Emails – The next item is Email. Gmail business email integration can be done here.

Connected accounts – You can connect your social media accounts with your Squarespace website here. The next time that you add social media profile icons anywhere on your Squarespace site, Squarespace will use information from this section and automagically link the icons to your profiles.

Marketing – Inside the marketing setting options, youâ€™ve settings for SEO, social media, and Google Adwords.SEO settings from here will help you add an SEO excerpt for your site. This excerpt is visible to a user on the search engine results page. You can also set the URL formats of the different items on your site. The social media settings will help you decide which share buttons you want to show on your website. The Google Adwords marketing setting is for sites that use Squarespaceâ€™s Business or Commerce plans.

Blogging – The blogging settings help you set the blog post URL format.
Donâ€™t change the default format – itâ€™s already reader-friendly. However, if you like, you can remove the year, month, and date from it. These settings also allow you to integrate connect your blog with Disqus, a commenting service. This way, your users will be able to comment on your content via their Disqus accounts. (Thereâ€™s a default commenting system too if you donâ€™t want Disqus.)
The blogging settings also help you to enable AMP providers to show the AMP version of your blog posts. (AMP optimized pages are ones that show toned down versions web pages to mobile visitors â€” this helps in offering a blazing-fast mobile browsing experience.)

SSL – You can choose between a secured and an insecure version of your site under SSL setting. Choose the secured version because Google prefers secure websites over insecure ones.

Advanced – The advanced settings allow you to import site content from other website builders or CMSes. It also lets you export your site to WordPress.
If you create a custom 404 page for your site, you can use the advanced settings to show your customized 404 page instead of the default 404 page.
You can also add your Google Analytics account number via these settings. Doing so will automatically install the Google Analytics script to your site.

Thatâ€™s it.

If youâ€™ve been following this guideâ€™s instructions, by now your first functional (if not a perfect) Squarespace website should be ready.

The first thing to do after launching your Squarespace website

Once you launch a new website, your first task is to get it indexed by Google.

To speed up the indexing process, you must submit its sitemap to Google Search Console.

How to build a Squarespace website – Wrapping it up

Creating a Squarespace website and tweaking and customizing it to perfection shouldn't take you more than a week. Once youâ€™re done, you donâ€™t have to worry about updates or hacking or hosting or anything else; Squarespace will manage your website for you.

I hope this guide equips you to build a rough version of your first Squarespace site in less than 10 hours (factoring in time for buying the domain and other things).

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